From Victor3:
Hmmm.... One advantage of a thicker wall would be that a fairly hefty bbl could be made from a liner with just a Parrott-style boot shrunk over the chamber area. Thataway, no need to make a full-length bbl and sleeve it. More cheaper, and guys with smaller lathes could make their own.
All true and the varieties and styles of artillery which could be made go way beyond the common Parrott. The addition of a reinforcing band means the addition of a vent liner though to provide an unbroken egress for those hot combustion gasses. Don’t burn your fingers while shrink fitting the band!
On length, longer is better but I'm thinking $$$. I know the material isn't that spendy but it seems that every time I make a part, the deeper I have to bore into it, the more I sweat. And my sweat don't come cheap.
After calling quite a few suppliers we are beginning to think that maybe deep hole drilling and reaming less than spendy, solid rounds of 1018 steel might actually be cheaper than buying Expensive seamless mechanical tube. Supplier A $ 192 delivered from Chicago, IL Supplier B $ 237 delivered from Houston, TX Supplier C $ 263 delivered from SF, California
The specs for all of these bids were these: One piece, low carbon steel, 1018, 1020, 1026 CDS, 36” long X 3” OD X 1” ID per A519.CDS, Cold Drawn Seamless should not cost this much, but it does in quantities less than half a ton. The cost of solid 1018 rounds is much less, just slightly more than 1/3 of these costs.
I coulda sworn Bill Wilson was patching balls in the video he posted of him shooting his cannon. Musta been a fig newton of my imagination. I'll get right on that Whelin, soon as I can find my Dremel and some prussion blue. For now, I have a nice 1 1/4-12 bolt and tap.
Well we are about even on misspellings now. Prussion s/b Prussian and Whelin s/b Welin, so you are certainly forgiven, however, we can NEVER forgive you for bringing up Prussian Blue. I don’t know how much experience you have using it, but Mike and I had much, much more experience than we ended up wanting while working at Sundstrand Aviation in north Denver, CO. For those unfamiliar with this pigment discovered in 1704 by Herr Diesbach, a dye maker in Berlin. Germany, the name came from it’s use as a dye to color Prussian military uniforms. It had many uses through the years, but those of a colorant in “blueprints” , clothing and a fit-check contact transfer agent for machinists and inspectors, are most notable.
At the aircraft plant. we needed a way to quickly indicate the percentage of contact between two hemispherical parts as in a ‘ball and socket’ assembly. As I recall contact between the surfaces was to be 80% minimum, checked visually. The problem with this dye was that it was mixed with a very thin grease, at a ratio of about 95% finely divided dye to 5% grease. Supplied in a little tin, like percussion caps come in, we absolutely dreaded opening those tins. This dye was truly wretched stuff. It was awful, icky, horrid and vile. It was also tenacious beyond belief. No matter how extremely careful you were in handling it and applying it to the parts, a tiny piece would escape and end up coloring a portion of your finger, clothing, bench, wipe rag, etc., etc. Inspectors would walk by oblivious to their blue noses, cheeks and foreheads after using this stuff. It was the gift that kept on giving!! Two months after it’s use you could pick up some Prussian Blue unknowingly in a different part of the shop and contaminate your work area all over again!
Tracy
